The Bogeyman

I don’t know why my older sister Julie was so paranoid about bad guys when we were kids, but she passed her neurosis onto me.

Julie and I shared a bedroom. Initially, we had twin beds. (Don’t get me started on how I was sleeping in a regular twin bed long before I turned two years old because brother Jeff was born so soon after me.) The room was sizeable enough and had two windows – one facing the front yard and the other facing the side yard.

I don’t know how old Julie was when she first grappled with her demons but she was probably about nine or ten when she introduced her demons to me. I know I was probably five or six when I first remember our taking steps to protect ourselves.

Neither Julie nor I would enter our bedroom after dark if the curtains were open. We were afraid that bad guys and other sneaky people would be able to watch us without our knowing it. We were well aware that with the light on in the room, the bad guys outside could see us perfectly well while we, on the other had, could see nothing outside where the bad guys hid in the dark of night.

At first, when our curtains were open after dark, we begged one of our parents to come and shut them before we would enter the room. After my parents had made several trips to our room and with repeated assurances that there was nothing to fear, they refused to shut the curtains for us anymore. Julie and I were on our own.

So, taking charge, Julie established a new and safe protocol for our closing the curtains ourselves. In instances when the curtains in our bedroom were open after dark – and only then – one or both of us would first, turn out the light in our bedroom and then crawl on our hands and knees to a window – so we were below the glass and out of sight – and pull the cord that shut the curtains. If we were doing this together, I was always in charge of the front window (the most dangerous) and Julie was in charge of the side window. If I were alone in the security operation, I always shut the front curtains first before crawling over to the second window. Perfectly normal, right?

Julie was also thoughtful enough to instill in me a fear of closed closet doors. Our bedroom had a closet with two shuttered doors that folded open to either side. We always slept with the closet doors open so bad guys (including our brothers, I suppose), couldn’t hide inside the closet without our knowing.

I haven’t forgotten the time our parents had ordered new beds for our room. I’m hoping that by writing about it now, I can purge my aggrieved psyche of the whole incident.

Years before the new beds were even ordered, I had “called” that if Julie and I ever got bunk beds – always a long-time dream we shared – I would get the top bunk. At the time I called it, Julie must have been convinced we’d never have bunk beds because she was very agreeable to this condition.

The kids in my family were all about “calling” things. Things ranged from front seat in the car, to brown chair in the family room, to what we would watch at 7:00 pm on Sunday – Walt Disney or Wild Kingdom. John was the only one who wanted Wild Kingdom. Sometimes he would steal the pliers we used to change the channel so no one could change it back to the Disney show we’d been watching. Anyway, that’s another story.)

The new beds my parents had ordered for our room turned out to be a raised twin bed with a trundle underneath. My parents had to assemble the beds so one evening, while they assembled them, Julie and I were allowed to camp out on the living room floor. After the beds were assembled, my parents planned to move us into the beds.

Imagine my shock when I woke to find myself in the trundle bed! I knew at the time that the trundle setup was the closest Julie and I would ever get to having bunk beds, so I was livid that I wasn’t put on the top bed. (I think I realized later that I probably hadn’t mentioned my calling the top bunk to my parents and that they had just assumed that the older of us would get the top bed.)

So, that first morning, Julie, feeding on the fears she had instilled in me years before, (and conniver that she was), explained to me why she thought I probably wouldn’t want the top bed after all. Can you guess what she said? Because you can see right inside the closet from the top bed. That translated to: Any bad guy hiding in the closet would have a clear view of whoever was sleeping in the top bed.

I’m a sucker. I was convinced. That’s all it took. My years of “calling” top bunk were summarily erased into oblivion because of the mere hint of an imaginary someone lurking in our closet! I surrendered my longed-for upper bunk to live the pitiful life of a trundle bed troll. (There is nothing glamorous about having a trundle bed. They are a pain in the butt. To make her bed, Julie merely had to toss her blankets up over her pillow. I had to pull my blankets up so the were taut and then go around the circumference of the mattress tucking the blankets into the trundle box. Then I had to push the giant box until it was completely under Julie’s bed. It took Julie less than a minute to make her bed. It took me over ten.)

I’m pretty sure it was also Julie who put into my head that thunderstorms were nothing to be afraid of. Instead, we should welcome them. Why? Because bad guys wouldn’t want to be lurking outside our windows in the rain. I admit that I maintain this belief today.

I have often wondered when and why Julie had developed her fear of these so-called bad guys. Just this morning I asked her. She can’t remember why or when her childhood paranoia began. As far as I know, she no longer crawls to shut her curtains if it’s dark outside. Even if she does, she wouldn’t tell me. I can assure you, though, that I do not. (I couldn’t possibly – we have hard wood floors.) I will also tell you though, that I am still very cautious when shutting our blinds when it’s dark outside.

I never had any sense of what a “bad guy” did besides peer through your windows without your permission or knowledge. It never occurred to me that these spies could be kidnappers, robbers or homicidal maniacs. Those were the days, right? No real clue about all the evil that lurks just outside our bedroom windows. ✿